Writer Friendly

A cup of coffee offers the perfect blind when stalking dialogue inspiration.

The Dialogue of Everyday Life

by Mary Casey

You might call me a professional eavesdropper. I was always taught – and now teach – that the best way to learn the craft of writing dialogue is to listen to how people speak.

As any playwright will tell you, dialogue is especially important in the short play form. Ten-minute plays, five-minute plays, even one-page plays. There is no time for dawdling in the short play. The form demands a tightly structured story, a clear point of attack and dialogue that moves the story along while telling us about character and place.

I overheard a wonderful opening line for a ten-minute play the other day. A man and a woman were sitting at a table at a funky-couch coffee house in downtown L.A. Suddenly my ears tuned in to the woman saying, “And that’s where you put the log line, right there.”

This seemingly banal dialogue does everything that’s asked of it: it establishes a mentor/student relationship; it suggests that the mentor is a bit pushy or at least unsure of the acuity of the student (was it really necessary to add, “right there”?); it lets us know immediately we are either watching screenwriters or people who know how to pretend to be screenwriters (how many poets do you know who write brief summaries of their work using a hook?); and it hints to us that, yes, the setting is very likely the greater Los Angeles area (true, you might talk about log lines in Wichita but not with such casual abandon).

Who knew one line of dialogue could carry ten times its own weight?

Not that I typically use overheard dialogue verbatim. Sometimes it just clues me in to different speech rhythms. False starts are a study in and of themselves. “Geoff is, well… let’s just say, Geoff really knows his stuff. And he’s great to listen to.” My immediate question was of course, What was she going to say before she stopped herself? Geoff is, well…what? Geoff is an insufferable pain in the ass but really knows his stuff? A womanizer and libertine but one who’s great to listen to?

The false start is always filled with elusive meaning. Now Geoff, in this case, was a respected academic about to address a room full of people. He does indeed really know his stuff and, on occasion, is great to listen to. So the false start may well have been innocent. But my, how it does give us pause.

Much has been made lately of the change in aural communication in public space because of the ubiquity of cell phones. And I have to concede the phenomenon has had an effect on my data collection. I often walk past people on cell phones now who seem to be having the most mundane conversations – confirming schedules and chores, calling to say hi, or just being monosyllabic. All virtually worthless for stage dialogue unless you hang with the absurdists.

Sometimes, however, the loss of privacy in public space can produce some odd overheard communication. Like a recent bus passenger on a cell phone who was helping initiate her younger sister into the rite of menstruation. Which was quickly followed by a second monologue to the passenger’s boyfriend retelling the rite of passage. Even a dialogue hound like me has to concede that with this loss-of-privacy thing, we’ve definitely crossed over to TMI.

So, for better or worse, apparently technology and our hectic modern lives have not completely robbed us of the possibilities of overheard conversations. Not that I’m eavesdropping exactly. Just, well…listening hard.